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A new report out today documents Robert Mugabe’s alleged campaign of organized sexual violence against opposition supporters during the 2008 elections in Zimbabwe. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.
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MARCO WERMAN: In his speech, President Obama also paid tribute to reformers who brave repression from their own governments. He singled-out those in Zimbabwe who cast their ballots in the face of physical violence. A report out today, lays-out in detail the nature of some of that violence. The report alleges that during last year’s elections President Robert Mugabe and supporters orchestrated a campaign of rape against the opposition. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.
JEB SHARP: The report is called, “Electing to Rape: Sexual Terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.” It documents, in chilling detail, the rape of women affiliated with the opposition, MDC Party, by supporters of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF Party. Stephen Lewis is Co-Director of AIDS Free World, the organization that produced the report.
STEPHEN LEWIS: The rapes, we recorded through affidavits from seventy women, occurred in every single province of the country; and the patterns were unmistakable. The rapists all wore ZANU-PF T-shirts; they all sang ZANU-PF songs; they told the women as they were raping them that they were raping them because the women supported the opposition party, MDC. I mean, I must say that I have never heard of an instance where you had extreme sexual violence unleashed against women because they happened to be members of a political party.
SHARP: AIDS Free world engaged the pro bono services of a major American law firm to take sworn affidavits. The lawyers made six separate trips to the region, interviewing dozens of survivors. The victims range from children to the elderly. According to the report, the 70 women were raped, collectively, 380 times, by 241 different ZANU-PF loyalists—many were gang-raped. Stephen Lewis says the alleged atrocities constitute crimes against humanity because of the orchestrated nature of the violence.
LEWIS: Even the same language was used, by rapists in different parts of the country, while they were raping the women; and so was the torture that was inflected. You know, the women were always beaten on the soles of the feet; always beaten on the buttocks; always with the same instruments. And as we accumulated the affidavits with some considerable horror, we realized he’s using it as a strategy to win an election—that was his total purpose, was to hold on to power—and he was prepared to sacrifice women’s bodies for that purpose.
SHARP: There’s been no response yet from Mugabe, but in the past he’s dismissed allegations that he’s responsible for political violence. As for the scale of the alleged crimes, AIDS Free World believes these 70 women and their stories could represent thousands more. Zimbabwean author and human rights advocate, Peter Godwin, does too.
PETER GODWIN: I’ve spent months during the violence there, and everything—the cases that they’ve got here—completely chime with all the information that I was getting; with all the people I was talking to. We have this problem with rapes, specifically, in that it’s so stigmatizing, and that people are … It’s terribly underreported that the victims are–in many, many cases—unwilling to come forward. And in Zimbabwe they’re still scared, because often they are living still in the vicinity of the perpetrators.
SHARP: Godwin is writing his own book about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. He’s impressed with the rigor of this particular report.
GODWIN: Nothing’s been done on rapes, specifically, that’s this detailed. And a lot of the stuff that comes out tends to be journalistic, and some of it sort of impressionistic to some extent. I mean I’m not saying it’s not accurate, but here what we’ve got—you know, high-powered legal teams going over there and taking affidavits that are “water-tight.”
SHARP: The hope is to use the document as the basis for a legal case against Mugabe, and to put pressure on countries like South Africa to withdraw their support for him. The report’s authors say, for now, women are terrified the same thing will happen again in the next round of elections. For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.
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